Before A Valley Without Wind was released I excitedly emailed Jim to demand we discuss the game verdict-style after he’d told everyone wot he thought. I was bewitched by the idea of exploring the worlds it built and was even determined to be that guy, the one who actually liked the graphics. Once I read Jim’s words and played for a while myself I realised that we were of similar mind so a verdict would involve us nodding sagely at one another over a decanter of port, occasionally ‘harrumphing’. I couldn’t even make myself like the way it looked, even as an exercise in contrarian lunacy. Version 1.1 promises significant changes though and Arcen might just be on to something.

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Arcen send word that their procedurally-generated adventure game, A Valley Without Wind, is taking a new direction, as you can see in the video I’ve posted below. Rather than being top-down, it’s now a side-scroller. Developer Chris Park explained that the changed had been discussed for some time, and really came about after seeing previews of the game in a top-down perspective, and the reactions people had to that. He also argues that the side-scrolling perspective fits perfectly with the game’s exploration and survival, as well as the evolving combat mechanics. The Arcen boss says: “The result of this side view switch is something that looks incredibly better, that’s orders of magnitude faster for us to create, and that’s more fun to play. It also helps give a much stronger sense of place: partly it’s seeing the sky when you’re outside, but it’s also the varied terrain height, long falls, poison water, and so on.”

It’s a major change, and it seems like an odd one to me. It might not have been the prettiest game in the world, but the perspective was certainly distinctive. This is… less so.
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Arcen have revealed a bit more about their procedurally-generated survive ’em up, A Valley Without Wind. There’a video of the lighting process below, and that also includes indoor environments, lava, and deserts, as well as just showing you a bit more of the character navigating about in the world. All this stuff gets explained in more detail by Chris Park over here.

Getting serious 16-bit era chills off this one.
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This is the second part of our extensive interview with Arcen Games’ Chris Park about their forthcoming procedurally-generated action-adventure survival game, A Valley Without Wind. Read on…
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Arcen Games, famed for AI War, financial troubles, and causing a shortage of iron, have announced their new game: A Valley Without Wind. It’s quite the concept: survival in a procedurally generated world, exploration, magic, and… perma-death? Interesting. Read on to find out more. (So much more, that there’s another instalment tomorrow.)
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Right. This is a funny one. Releasing today is the new game from Arcen Games, who you remember from the splendid expansive and original space-strategy game AI War: Fleet Command which you may remember from our long-running diary series which you may remember from Quinn’s constant and chronic lack of Iron. Anyway, his new game is totally nothing like that. I actually have used the logo as the header, as if I just show a screenshot you’d go “Casual square-matching game! No!” and click away. But this is a lot niftier than that – it really seems like exactly how you’d imagine the creator of AI War would make a square-matching game, in terms of quietly adding depth. I’ve only had a quick twenty minutes of it, but it has a mass of content and highlights its rotate-square-create-chains dynamic perfectly. Give it a shot, on PC or Mac. You can buy it from ten dollars direct from the developer, or on any of the usual direct-download places. Well, at least when they appear later today. Launch trailer follows…
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